Some aspects of Vyapti and Upadhi in the Nyayalilavati

The topic of this book is the investigation of a concise and fairly intricate textual passage appearing in a theoretical treatise presumably written in India in the 13th century AD dealing with questions of the appropriate explanation of two technical terms which play a central role in the framework of theories of influence at that time. Focus lies on a number of problems of textual exegesis which have either not yet found a definite and adequate solution in the previous Indian or Western literature dealing with the text or have not even been recognized as problems at all. Apart from a sufficiently exact identification of the conceptual content of the key terms discussed in the textual passage, the ascertainment of the nature of arguments provided by the writer of the text for a rejection of alternative definitions as well as not explicitly formulated premises motivating their dismissal and tacitly presupposed requirements for the adequacy of definitions constitute major goals of the present study. Two aims of a more general kind are equally pertinent, viz. a) to explore limitations inhering in a reduction of the perspective of assessment to aspects that are envisaged by a tradition of which an object of investigation, such as a text or the author of a text, is a part and b) to demonstrate the intimateness of the relation between possessing a firm grasp of theoretical issues treated in Indian philosophical texts and a central concern of traditional philological investigations, namely ascriptions of content to linguistic items.